Wrestling By The Numbers: Mark ‘Starr’ Ashford Smith

Former multiple time tag-team champion and well known enhancement talent Mark ‘Starr’ Ashford-Smith has passed away. The 50-year-old Clearwater Florida native had a 12-year professional wrestling career that started back in 1986. Starr’s first big break came in 1987 when he joined the Continental Wrestling Association spending a year with the company mostly competing as a tag-team wrestler. Alongside partners Steve Keirn and his real life brother Chris Champion he became a former 1-Time CWA International Tag-Team Champion and former 1-Time CWA Tag-Team Champion. At the time the CWA had a talent exchange deal in place with the American Wrestling Association and along with Billy Joe Travis, he also became a former 1-Time AWA Southern Tag-Team Champion.

From 1988-1990 Mark Starr worked for organizations including Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and the Professional Wrestling Federation before leaving North America to compete in Japan in 1991. Starr spent 2-years in the orient competing for both Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling and Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi. In 1994 he also competed in Puerto Rico for the International Wrestling Association. Mark Starr had worked briefly for World Wrestling Entertainment as an enhancement talent in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, and was a regular with the company for a few months in 1994.

Mark Starr had worked occasionally for World Championship Wrestling in the early 1990’s but signed on full-time with the company in 1994 after leaving the WWE. He was a regular for WCW over the next 4-years with his largest success coming as apart of a tag-team with Chris Kanyon known as Men At Work. Starr suffered a back injury in 1998 and left WCW and announced his retirement from professional wrestling. It was reported that Mark ‘Starr’ Ashford-Smith had passed away back on June 7th after suffering a heart attack.

Below we look at the professional wrestling career of Mark ‘Starr’ Ashford-Smith by the numbers…